large oil canvas painting, 3. 2 metres high and 2. 76 metres wide, depicting several figures inside a vast interior space. the foreground is filled with light, mainly falling on a group of girls in fine dresses, and also, although less harshly, on a man on the left side of the picture, who appears to be a painter. elements further back in the image, including two additional figures, are in shadow, except for a distant doorway with the silhouette of a man, and an illuminated image of a man and a woman inside a frame on the back wall. from the right, there streams in through an invisible window the pure volume of a light that renders all representation visible ; to the left extends the surface that conceals, on the other side of its all too visible woven texture, the representation it bears. the light, by flooding the scene, the panel running off the left hand side of the picture can be identified as the back of a large painting, as canvas edges are visible against the wooden structure and it is faced on its other side by the painter, who is captured holding an artist ’ s palette and several brushes in one hand 